Beware (2010)

The town of Shady Grove holds many dark secrets. Amongst those secrets is the sadistic tale of "Shane", a boy who was tortured and chained to a tree as a youngster. Legend has it that for years he survived in the woods all alone until one day he managed to escape. Now, damaged and broken, he wanders those woods in search of blood, with his trademark chains fused to his wrists. Despite years of tales and urban myths, no proof of his existence has ever been discovered, until five unsuspecting teens reveal the truth on an ill-fated trip. 

The movie has the perfect name....Beware watching it.  The cast of kids that go off into the woods are bad...very bad.  I was cheering the killer to finish them off.  That guy Francisco...He was so annoying that I want to find him in real life and whip his ass. But it wasn't all horrible.  The sheriff and the 2 rednecks are actually pretty amusing in the film.  

That's Francisco on the right...the dude with the black fingernails and in serious need of a haircut.

I'm going to throw out some more praise.  The film/production crew actually did a pretty good job with what had to be a shoe string budget. The film looks more expensive than it actually was.  And while I'm dishing out good vibes, let me also say that the killer "Shane" is pretty damn cool.  It's a shame the cast around him was the opposite of cool.

Overall I've seen much worse slasher films.  Only for diehard horror fans though. 

You've Been Warned!

Don't Go In The Woods (2010)

A young band heads to the woods in order to focus on writing new songs. Hoping to emerge with new music that will score them their big break, they instead find themselves in the middle of a nightmare beyond comprehension. 

Don't Go in the Woods is a 2010 American horror musical written and directed by Vincent D'Onofrio. You read that correctly....a fucking horror musical. I'm not sure how to even begin as I've never seen anything like this.  That does it....I'm watching an Elvis movie next.

A band goes into the woods to try and come up with some new songs and before long their girlfriends show up as well.  After that a killer shows up with a sledgehammer and starts taking everybody out.  He must have really hated that singing as much as I did.  I don't think your understand...80% of this film is them singing songs.  I love horror movies and kind of like watching silly bad horror movies....but this film made me angry.  This film should be taken into the woods and left there.

Hey everybody let's sing some songs around the campfire.

In D'Onofrio's defense...the directing wasn't awful only because there didn't appear to be any.  The visuals were fine mainly because they were at least in focus.  But the singing...it's all singing.  The foreign bitch starts singing while the killer is chasing her.  The director for some reason needed every single insignificant "actor" in the film to get a solo song performance.  I've seen hundreds of horror films, and I seriously cannot remember the last time I was this irritated by a one. This movie has absolutely no redeeming qualities. 

Please kill me so I don't have to attend the premiere.

Time for a song.

The Driller Killer (1979)

An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill. 

The Driller Killer is a 1979 horror film directed by and starring Abel Ferrara. It was on a list of banned so-called video nasties in the United Kingdom.  When you look at the name of the film you immediately think it's a slasher film.  It has violent finish but it is closer to being a character study of a man driven to insanity by his squalid, and increasingly anarchic urban environment.  It's more of a social drama about life in the big city than it is a horror shocker. 

It follows Reno Miller (Abel Ferrara) as a struggling painter.  He's painting a picture of a big fucking buffalo for some reason and dude is always angry and irate.  He owes money to everybody and argues with everybody he meets.  His two roommates, Carol (Carolyn Marz) and Pamela (Baybi Day) both spend his money, cover his bills, and take rather erotic showers together.  A punk band moves in next door and drive him crazy with practicing day and night.  They are god awful.  Reno then goes out and buys a drill and proceeds to kill homeless bums with it.  The music is so terrible I almost went out and bought a drill.  Reno then moves on to using the drill on others and it leads to the violent climax of the film.

I told you I'd get you the rent.

The Driller Killer was originally banned as a "video nasty" because of the notoriety it gained for it's cover art, as opposed to it's content.  Ferrara's use of deep red in the film was particularly striking, the red symbolising Reno's ever-growing rage with life from the outset; a character driven to extreme anger out of the pressures of urban life, who then kills homeless `bums' out of a fear that one day he too will become like them.  We are frequently shown religious icons of varying sorts and I'm not sure why.  There are really no other religious overtones to this movie that I could see.

The acting is on the low-budget side. But there's something about the Driller Killer that works, almost in spite of itself.  This film really documents the village punk circuit at the end of the 1970's.  The hand-held mingling with the street people of the period shows how filthy NYC was at the time.  Overall, the Driller Killer is a creative and inventive insight into insanity. It's not a masterpiece like some movies that deal with a similar theme, such as Taxi Driver, but it a very good movie and recommended to fans of shock cinema.

The stupid fucking buffalo painting.

 Trivia:

Abel Ferrara claims that half of this movie was shot in 1978 and the other half was shot in 1979. This explains why the actors hair styles and looks in general change quite frequently during the movie. 

Title is mentioned in the song "Nasty" by The Damned - a song about horror movies that were banned in the U.K. after the Video Recording Act of 1984.

Abel Ferrara claims that the black guy cleaning the taxi cab windscreen near the beginning of the film was Bruce Willis. 

Could have easily escaped the UK 'video nasty' list if the original pre-VRA video cover wasn't so graphic. it featured a very bloody close-up of a drill boring into a man's head with lots of blood. The video cover was featured in video catalogues and received many complaints.

James O'Hara's final film. 

Cherry Falls (2000)

In the small town of Cherry Falls a masked murderer is killing off the virgins of the local high school.

Cherry Falls is a 2000 slasher film written by Ken Selden and directed by Geoffrey Wright. The film stars Brittany Murphy, Jay Mohr, and Michael Biehn.  Here's the storyline:  A psychotic serial slasher starts a bloodthirsty murder rampage at Cherry Falls high school that only kills the local high school virgins. This leads to the local teenage population organizing a sex party in order to lose their virginity and thus no longer be targets...

Believe or not....this is not a horrible film. Following the release of Scream, a revival started with a wave of copy cat slasher films. This may be one of the least known of those but it's one of the better films to come from it.  Written by Ken Selden, the story mixes dark comedy with the horror genre pretty much in the vein of Scream, using a clever twist to the genre cliché of the virginal survivors. The mystery of the killer's identity is very well handled and the story unfolds as Jody's investigation takes her to discover the town's past. Surprisingly, the movie never gets boring or tedious, and it serves its purpose as a thrilling mystery/horror film.  The sad part is it ended up being a TV movie.

See what happens when you keep that virginity ladies.

The main cast is very good, particularly Jay Mohr as a concerned teacher who is truly worried about his students. Brittany Murphy is very good in the lead role and is quite believable as a common teen girl. The rest of the cast do a very good job but nothing really outstanding outside the leads.

Revel in the film's humor and artistry. This was never intended to be a cult horror film. It is a fun movie, and should be judged according to entertainment value. It's a film to easily amuse when you don't have the energy or enthusiasm for life's drudgery.

Cherry Falls is a film that really got the shaft on its releasing, as it's far superior to a number of the theatrically released slasher-by-the-numbers flicks that where out around the time. Horror fans, before you bother with the likes of Urban Legend (1998), the lousy Valentine (2001) or any sequel, give this one a turn! You just might find it to be one of the best!

Britany Murphy

 Trivia:

The films German title is 'Sex oder stirb!' meaning 'Sex or Die!' The bizarre title for the Mexico release was 'Corre... no grites' which translates to 'Run...Don't Scream'. 

Never received a cinema release in the US.

The town meeting scene was filmed in the hallways and gymnasium of Thomas Jefferson High School in Richmond, VA.

Stephen Lang was slated for the lead role as the Sheriff but scheduling conflicts prevented him from playing in the film. He later admitted that the only reason he wanted to do the part was to work with Brittany Murphy again.

This movie is one of the few movies out there where the credits run backwards (top to bottom; not the normal bottom to top).

A group of virgins regretting their choices

Michael Biehn initially wasn't interested in the movie because, after reading 15 pages of the script, he thought it was just another slasher movie. His agent convinced him to keep reading. Biehn liked the satirical approach to the genre and decided to do the movie.

Geoffrey Wright's only non-Australian film. 

Movie producers at Millennium Studios secured permission from Richmond Public Schools to film interior and exterior scenes at Thomas Jefferson High School during Easter Break and the week following. Thomas Jefferson High School shared the building and grounds at the time with the Governor's School for Government and International Studies (GSGIS), a regional school for gifted students. RPS failed to mention this, and the fact that the two schools shared different schedules, to movie producers. RPS also failed to mention that a movie would be filmed on the site to GSGIS administration. As a result, Cherry Falls started filming at the end of the school day, only to be interrupted an hour later when the GSGIS students were released from class. To secure the set, doors had been locked and hallways had been blocked, preventing students from exiting. The confusion was eventually cleared, and the producers provided GSGIS administration with a synopsis of the plot, and details about the time-line, scheduling, and deal with RPS. School administration then included the synopsis in a letter to concerned parents. The synopsis failed to mention the satirical slant of the storytelling, and instead provided the plot as a serious storyline. Parents then complained that RPS allowed porn movies to be filmed on school property.

First Hollywood acting credit for Zachary Knighton.

Deep Red (1975)

A musician witnesses the murder of a famous psychic, and then teams up with a fiesty reporter to find the killer while evading attempts on their lives by the unseen killer bent on keeping a dark secret buried. 

Deep Red is a 1975 Italian giallo film, directed by Dario Argento and co-written by Argento and Bernardino Zapponi.  It was produced by Claudio and Salvatore Argento, and the film's score was composed and performed by Goblin. It stars Macha Meril as a medium and David Hemmings as a man who investigates a series of murders performed by a mysterious figure wielding a hatchet.

As with other Argento films, the accent in "Deep Red" is on the visuals: the artsy sets, the garish lighting, the tendency for the camera to dwell on brutal details. Unlike his film Suspiria, where the story is weak, Deep Red has a good plot element that builds to an excellent finale. Clues are very subtle, but they're there, if you pay close attention.

Argento's film thrives on offbeat sounds and images

Deep Red is about a man that sees a murder committed and then tries to unravel the mystery of finding the killer.  David Hemmings does a fine job in the lead as he walks the streets of an Italian city in search of this homicidal killer. The killings, most done with a hatchet, are inventive and decidedly gruesome.  The acting, even though most dubbed, is very good. The set locations are very atmospheric as well. Argento's camera, however, is the principal character as it shows us all kinds of images related to plot and otherwise and reached into our subconscience for real meaning. This is first and foremost a visual film.

What I did find annoying in "Deep Red" was the background music. Most viewers like the sound of Goblin. But the music was too frantic, and not really suitable for a thriller.  While I still favor "Suspiria" as Argento's best film, it's easy to see why Deep Red is considered his greatest by some. It's a terrific landmark thriller that firmly ranks as one of Argento's best!

Trivia: 

In one scene David Hemmings walks past a bar at night. The bar is styled after the famous painting "Nighthawks", by Edward Hopper.

Following the 11 seconds of cuts made in 1993 to the Redemption video the Platinum DVD restored the brief dogfight scene though one cut was retained. On a Dario Argento collection where versions could be chosen (English or Italian) the longer Italian language version showed a very sloppy cut before the unfortunate lizard was seen on-screen with a pin through its head. The shorter English language print had no such cuts. 

The closeup shots of the killer's hands, clad in black leather gloves, were performed by director Dario Argento himself.

Director trademark:[Dario Argento] Murder victim crashes through window.

Director trademark: [Dario Argento] Character recalls clues from memory.

Director Dario Argento's shop in Rome is named 'Profondo Rosso' after this film. 

Co-writer Bernardino Zapponi said the inspiration behind the murder scenes came from Argento and himself thinking of painful injuries that the audience could relate to. Basically, not everyone knows the pain of being shot by a gun, but everyone has at some point accidentally struck furniture or been scalded by hot water.

After the international success of Dario Argento's next film Suspiria (1977), Profondo Rosso was released in Japan under the title Suspiria 2 even though it has no plot connections with Suspiria and was made two years prior to Suspiria.

Even if the story is set in Rome, most of the outdoor scenes were actually shot in Turin.

The role of Carlo's male transvestite lover, Massimo Ricci, was actually played by female actress Geraldine Hooper.

"You have just seen Deep Red."

Phenomena (1985)

A young girl, with an amazing ability to communicate with insects, is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school, where her unusual capability might help solve a string of murders.  

Phenomena is a 1985 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento. An edited version of the film was released in the United States under the title Creepers.  When I was younger I remember seeing the video sitting on the shelves in the local video shop.  It was under the "Creepers" title and it looked sort of silly so I never rented it.  I'm glad I didn't.  That version for the US was butchered up with a lot of footage cut.  I've now gotten around to viewing the entire film with all the sliced footage intact.  

It has a 14-year-old Jennifer Connelly, playing a sleepwalker who has a bizarre telepathic bond with insects and uses them to help her solve a string of gory murders at a girls boarding school in the Swiss Alps. A lot of people love this film and a lot of people hate this film.  I fall right in the middle.  It's not bad but I don't find it very good either. Donald Pleasance is in the film as a wheelchair bound bug dude. But the entire time I'm watching him on screen I keep thinking he's going to burst out in a rant about Micheal Myers being the devil.  Instead he's hanging out with a pet monkey. 

Bubbles, did MJ touch you in the bad place?

 Phenomena is a surreal, magical and surprisingly beautiful film.  It also has gruesome gore with a swimming pool full of maggots and rotting corpses, a mad dwarf, a razor wielding monkey and grisly decapitations. And we get a kick ass soundtrack with Iron Maiden and Motorhead.  Partially a Giallo, and partially a horror film with psychic and transcendental elements, "Phenomena" is a creepy film that gets kind of silly of times in my opinion with the bug communication deal.

The special effects were decent, given the year. The firefly special effects were cool, and there was at least one swarm scene that I thought looked pretty neat.  A lot of people love this movie but I don't fall into that group.  It's well below Suspiria in my opinion.  But if you ever wanted to see a monkey go ape shit with a razor blade then this is a movie you want to see.

Weird

 Trivia

Shot in English and dubbed into Italian. 

Most of the Italian and other non-English speaking actors/actresses actually dubbed their own voices into English for the USA and UK distribution.

A sequel to Phenomena was going to go into production in 2001 but it was canceled due to Dario Argento's contract with Medusa.   

Director Dario Argento said that his idea for the look of the killer child came from the real genetic disorder Patau Syndrome, which causes severe deformation of the face. For this reason, Argento calls the child Patau, even though he is never named during the film. 

Director Dario Argento often cites this film as his personal favorite among his works.

The trained chimpanzee that plays Inga escaped into the woods at one point during shooting. After a few hours of searching she was found and returned to the set. 

Jennifer Connelly said in an interview that she was bitten by the chimp in this film. Apperently during one scene the chimp kept turning around and Dario Argento, not wanting to film her behind, asked Connelly to place her hand on the animal to stop her from turning. But when she attempted to do so, the chimp became enraged and bit her; and then became very hostile toward Connelly for the rest of the film.  

The film was inspired to Dario Argento after he learned that insects are sometimes used during murder investigations. 

The story Jennifer tells about her mother abandoning her was an actual story from Dario Argento's own childhood. 

Jennifer Connelly had part of her finger bitten off by the chimpanzee in the final scene at the end of the film. She was rushed to the hospital and the finger was re-attached.  

A young Jennifer Connelly

Halloween Resurrection (2002)

When a group of teens win a contest to spend a night in Michael Myers' childhood home to be broadcast live on the internet, they believe they are in for a little fun and some free publicity. But, things go frightfully wrong and the game turns into a struggle to make it out of the house alive. 


Halloween Resurrection is the 8th film in the "Halloween" franchise and it blows.  I hate this film. It makes all the previous films in the series look like Citizen Kane.  I don't know which reviewer on the poster says, "One hell of a fun movie", but he needs to fired from whichever company he reviews for.

Here's the amazing plot of the film.  An organisation called Dangertainment, headed by the entrepreneurial Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) sends 6 contest winners into the old Myers house with cameras strapped to their head and broadcasts it over the internet.  Mike shows up and starts butchering everybody while the world watches online.  

Yes I will play Laurie one more time and die so I never have to do it again.

Jamie Lee Curtis is stuck in a mental institution to open up the film and Mike shows up to finally put her out of her misery.  The chase to kill Laurie is actually the lone bright spot of the movie.  It's all down hill from there.  We have Busta Rhymes running around and here's a spoiler...I don't even get to see his annoying ass get killed.  He lives and is the hero. Rock Rosenthal directed this nonsense.  He's the same guy that directed Halloween 2.  No wonder they handed the next movies to Rob Zombie to direct.  

Myers is stunned by the horrible acting he's watching. 

 I don't know what else to say.  I could write 10 more paragraphs about how awful this movie actually is but I'll just also mention that Tyra Banks is in it.  That should sum it up perfectly. I think I'll just pretend this movie was never made. 

 Trivia:
Was first named "Halloween: The Homecoming", but producers wanted a title that said Michael Myers is alive so in February 2002, the film was officially named "Halloween: Resurrection."  

Was originally set for a release date of September 21st 2001, but producers at Dimension Films wanted the film to be stronger so re-shoots took place from September to October 2001.  

Director Rick Rosenthal previously directed Halloween II - 21 years earlier.

The name Jen Danzig is a reference to Glenn Danzig, the former singer and leader of The Misfits, whom wrote and sung the songs Halloween and Halloween II after the original movie was released. The two songs have little to do with the movies since their lyrics do not even touch the main plot.  

Tyra Banks' characters death was cut. You can still see the aftermath in the movie.

A picture of Josh Hartnett, who played Laurie Strode's son John in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, can be seen on the wall above Laurie's bed in the sanitarium.  

Please do it Mike.

 Michael Myers is not given credit for any of the murders that occur in Halloweens' 4, 5, or 6. A sanitarium resident even notes that Myers was not heard from for the twenty years between the events that occur in Halloween II and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.
 
Jamie Lee Curtis agreed to do her part, only to make sure her character, Laurie Strode (or herself) wouldn't appear in another sequel.  

The name of the psychology professor at Haddenfield University is Dr. Mixter. This was also the name of the doctor in Halloween II that treated Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and was killed by Michael Myers with a needle in the eye.

Several new endings were written during production and the cast was never sure how the film was actually going to end. Four different endings were filmed, and the director wanted the studio to ship a different ending to each theater, a technique used before during the theatrical release of Clue. However, the studio disagreed and the endings now appear on the DVD and the Internet.  

Originally, the executives of Miramax wanted to continue the franchise by creating a whole new story of which didn't have anything to do with Michael Myers after the last film, in a similar manner to Halloween III: Season of the Witch. However, poll results conducted throughout fan websites proved to the producers that fans wanted Michael Myers to return again.

This is the second Halloween film to make any sort of reference as to what exactly Michael Myers eats. In the original Halloween, when Sheriff Brackett and Dr. Loomis enter the Myers house, they see something on the floor, which turns out to be the corpse of a dog. Dr. Loomis simply says "He got hungry."  

Body count: 10 (Plus one character presumed dead, but it's unconfirmed. If you count the bodies from the flashbacks then the body count is 14.)

Laurie Strode is only in the film for the first 15 minutes and only says 11 lines of dialog. 

Yeah baby...we're going to get Oscar nominations for this film.